Online Facilitation

Online Facilitation requires the “teacher” to take a more advisory role. The teacher is no longer the “sage on the stage”, but the “guide on the side.” This style of teaching is definitely more learner centered. The learner has a lot more responsibility for his own education. This may be a very difficult way for most teachers to teach. We are taught mainly a teacher centered approach when in undergrad and earning our certifications. The higher education facilities that are preparing teachers may have to start including more varied teaching styles – especially with the online experience requirement that our public school students now have. We are going to need someone to teach these classes and deal with students who are learning in these environments.
One of the issues I have with online courses is the isolation. This problem can be counteracted with the idea that facilitators will have to make sure that the interaction between students and themselves is very robust. But then how do you measure those interactions?
I also have issue with the idea of team building or groups – most of us in graduate programs have enough problems when working with groups face to face, let alone to add the additional layer of asynchronous online “interaction.”
This is another responsibility that the facilitator has. So although the student has more responsibility for their own learning, the facilitator now takes on additional roles of team builder, guide, motivator, technical support, etc, etc, etc.
Salmon’s five stages help with some of these tasks and turn over some of that responsibility back to the student. The first few stages make a lot of sense to me – making sure that students are able to access and use the technology and start getting comfortable in the environment. There are, of course, problems with this too. Unless you have a cohort group, your learners will come in at very different stages and comfort levels (as is true in f2f courses too). The motivation and socialization are very important steps too. Students have to know the “why” am I bothering with this modality of learning, other than the convenience factor. I think the socialization aspect may be easier for our students who are growing up in the social networking environments.